Hi Ahmed,

you should be able to sputter coat a metal layer on a non conductive material by using a sputter coater like Cressington 208HR. In my lab we use it to prepare samples for the SEM imaging where a conductive surface is required. You can select the metal you want to deposit such as Au,Pd just changing the metal target and mounting it in the instrument.  I hope this helps

Thanks Maria, it helps

Yes, surely. You can do it in Magnetron sputtering. For example, on a substrate of quartz glass any conductive metal/metal oxide can be deposited. In the same way, Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) can also be employed.

Yes, you can. Just change the non-conductive sputter target into the conductive sputter target made of the material that you want, replace your conductive substrate with the non-conductive one that you want to coat and run the coating process as before. The advantage with a conductive sputter target is also that you don't have to use RF sputtering (but you still can), if you don't want to, but you can use DC sputtering instead (as the target is conductive and won't charge).

In my opinion, ITO is the most suitable substrate  in this regard. You can also go through a lot of literature in this regard.

Yes you can sputter non-conductive substrates in both RF and DC PVD systems. It is done all the time in semiconductor processing, e.g. were SiO2 or Si3N4 coated wafers are deposited with metal or non-conductive layers. Be aware that if you want to sputter a non-conductive material you should use RF, RF-magnetron or DC-pulse. With pure DC or DC-magnetron you can only sputter conductive materials.

Sure, of course you can sputter a metallic target. You can do it in DC (the cathode is the metallic target: you apply a negative voltaje to it in order to atract the positive ions of the plasma and remove atoms with their collisions) or in RF. The term "magnetron" simply means that you have magnets behind the target that help to confine the plasma, allowing for using lower gas pressure.

Both DC and RF magnetron sputter can be used to deposit ultra-thin metallic,and semiconductor films on glass or any polymer substrates and you don't have to change your set-up at all. We use it all the time to deposit chromium / silver back contacts on sodalime glass(SLG) for solar cells. The same set-up is used aslo used to sputter deposit dielectrics such as silicon nitrides. For RF magnetron sputter, all you need to change is the "Load" and "Tune" values manually unless you have an automatic tuning network connected to your system.

Hello all, 

Thanks for your answers, I'm not using a Magnetron sputtering or commercial system, I'm building my own, so I'm wondering about the physics behind the operation principle.

How to accelrate the plasma ions while having a non conductive electrode?

Hi Ahmed,

For a good introduction to plasma theory related to semiconductor plasma systems read "glow discharges" by Brian Chapman.

Any metal can be easily sputter deposited on non conductivity substrate using both DC and rf (magnetron/non magnetron ) sputtering technique.

You have to use a pure argon plasma.

The physics behind rf sputtering is a bit more complex, so here only the essence with how one can imagine it: starting point is an rf plasma (typ. 13.56 MHz). In it, the mobility of the lighter e- is greater than that of the heavier ions. In combination with biasing the target (typ. a few 100 Volts) this leads to the ions being found primarily in front of the target. The rf frequency causes the ions to swing forth and back, hitting the target periodically, which sputters the target without charging it.